cindy's world

On the drive to work this morning, I told Mr. W that I had spoken to Rebecca last night. I told him I asked her “What happened to my embryos?”, and that she’d seen a whole bunch of eggs/embryos, saw embryos being discarded as they would or did lose viability, saw embryos being frozen, saw 2 women receiving embryos, one resulting in pregnancy and the other maybe not. I was about to launch into how my fertility doc lied to me, but before I could, Mr. W interrupted my story with, “The woman who got pregnant was you.”

…

Oh.

When I’d asked Rebecca my question, I had wanted to know what happened to my three donated embryos, but that was not what I’d asked. The Universe is pretty literal, and I had asked what happened to my embryos. That’s why she was shown what happened to the bunch of eggs that were initially harvested, as well. So the two women who received an embryo or embryos. One WAS me. The other was promised anonymity, as I knew she would be, when she agreed to receive my donated embryos.

“I don’t think it’s ethical for Dr. R to not tell you,” Mr. W said. “I think he HAS to tell you [if your donated embryos result in a birth].”

A common and frequent admonishment my judge tells witnesses as they prepare to testify is, “Listen carefully to the question(s) being asked, and answer THAT question. The questions are not an invitation to go rambling off and talk about what YOU want to talk about.” The universe listened to the question, and answered THAT question. I did not listen to my own question.

Dear Riley,

I asked Rebecca today simply, “What happened to my embryos?” No explanation nor background. She said it didn’t make any sense to her, but she saw that a bunch of them were either discarded or will be discarded because they can’t be kept viable longer than an x amount of time, like 3 years. (It didn’t make sense to me, either, until I later realized what she saw was the other 8 or so fertilized eggs that were indeed discarded by the fertility lab, when the most promising one was implanted to make Allie, and the other 3 best ones were frozen.) She said embryos were frozen. She said that embryos had gone to 2 women (which is the scenario I had originally expected), and that one resulted in a pregnancy and she may have given birth already, and Rebecca was getting a big question mark on the other woman, doesn’t think the other became a pregnancy. I was thrown because, you know, what the fertility doctor emailed me last month. I didn’t tell Rebecca anything, just asked her if there was any reason the fertility doc would lie to me about this, and she said that the parents asked for anonymity.

I was so, so angry. I felt violated that the fertility doctor lied to me. I felt that as the donor of the embryos, I had a right to know since he had offered me the DOBs if I wanted them. I felt like the recipient parents violated my embryo/child, because if they’re planning on carrying on with no one in the world but them knowing where the DNA came from, the child has a right to know a medical history in case he or a medical care provider needed family history info. I felt like Allie was being violated, because the reason for the DOB was to prevent accidental sibling inbreeding, since as patients of the same clinic, we’re very likely local to each other. Who do these recipient parents think they are? Don’t they owe me at least the courtesy of truth and/or a DOB, if I wanted it, for my giving them my CHILD?

After some time spent breaking down my thoughts and disturbing feelings of selfishness, it boiled down to this:

I really, really hope that in situations like this, and in this situation specifically, that it is my vehicle, their driver. I hope that the soul born into that family is the soul that was always meant for that family, but I just provided the vehicle because they needed a little help with the human form. I need it to be their son who came into their family, and not you. Because you are my Riley. MY Riley. I couldn’t get over it if I had accidentally given you away and displaced you into the wrong family. You let your sister through instead of coming through yourself this time; I’m fine with your (your and Allie’s) choice(s), I’m not okay with my accidental giving away of your choice.

To that, Rebecca said, “It’s all okay. I read a quote from Amma today that said ‘You are the Self, not the mind.’ In other words, be…don’t think…trust God. Riley is still floating around deciding where he will end up. At least that’s my visual.”

And suddenly, I was SO relieved. I don’t know why, because it’s the same effect. You’ll be born elsewhere to someone else if you decide to come down to this plane during my lifetime here. I guess I feel better knowing you’re not the donated embryo, because by not being that embryo, that means wherever you come out, it would be YOUR choice; I didn’t accidentally give you away.

And Rebecca said, “Nope…you didn’t.”

I feel an attachment to you, maybe from past lives shared. I know you. I feel you. I did in my early pregnancy, as well. You and Allie are so different; you’re peaceful, compassionate and a caretaker. Allie is spunky, fierce and independent. You patiently watch where she experimentally does. You provide help by sacrificing what you can; she takes but turns it into a (positive) payback contribution. You’re both good, but so yin and yang. She’ll give me a good run, some sharp challenges, some rebellions. You would’ve smiled and held me and said with confidence it’s all okay, and you would’ve been right. I still see you as the big brother, 3 years older than Allie, and I guess that was the original picture but that’s changed now, partly with your help. Again, a quiet sacrifice of sorts, stepping aside to let an eager soul come through in your place. “Plans change,” you are telling me now. “It’s okay. Nothing wrong with that. It’s not a sacrifice, just another way to get to the same place.”

I had wondered if the doctor was lying to me, because I had felt a kid out there. That was why I emailed last month. Rebecca told me to trust my instincts. I’m just relieved that’s not you, whatever that says about me. Dr. R likely didn’t like having to lie to me, and the email was curt. He for whatever reason “had” to defer to the recipient parents’ wishes over mine. He probably told himself he didn’t lie that MUCH, since one recipient really didn’t result in a pregnancy. Had he said simply that my embryos were donated to another couple and that it didn’t result in a pregnancy, it wouldn’t have been a lie but an omission about the other set of parents; but he said all 3 embryos were donated to 1 couple and didn’t result in a pregnancy.

I will miss you, as I already do, in this life. Unless…”Riley will be with you in some way if it’s meant to be. Trust the universe; it knows what it’s doing.” One of the last things Rebecca told me tonight. If I don’t see you Here, I’ll see you when I get back Home. Mama loves you, baby boy. Thanks for listening to me.

It must be terribly frustrating to know so much, and be able to express so little, and to feel so adamant about what you want. Even though Allie’s vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, her emotions are still way ahead of what she’s able to satisfy on her own. This morning I came downstairs to a bawling Allie. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Cereal,” she sobbed, barely coherent. “Cereal.”
Mr. W said, “She asked for cereal, I GAVE her cereal. She won’t eat it now. She ran away from it.”
“Cereal!” Allie cried.
“Here, cereal,” Mr. W offered. Allie turned away from it, cried again, doubled over in apparent distress. “I don’t understand what she wants,” he said, annoyed.
“She wants to feed herself,” I explained.
He offered her the bowl and spoon, she took it, put a spoonful of raisin and bran flakes in her mouth. I put her in her high chair, and she pointed at her new stuffed Winnie the Pooh bear that the stepkidlet had bought for her yesterday (departure gift; the stepkidlet has left for Europe for the summer). Mr. W picked up Pooh and placed him on the corner of the table closest to Allie but out of reach, saying, “Here, Winnie the Pooh is going to sit right here and watch Allie eat.” Allie dropped the cereal spoon, crying again in distress. So after I put on her bib, clicked in her tray, put the bowl on the tray, put the spoon back, I put Pooh Bear on the edge of the tray next to her and she immediately stopped crying and started eating again. Small demands, but she wants them SO, SO badly.

She definitely understands way more than she’s able to express, and until that catches up, I’ve read that this frustration is normal. Poor thing.

Over the weekend, Mr. W and Allie were looking at photos together. I heard him say, “See the waterfall?”
Allie’s reply: “Boom.”
I explained to Mr. W that her word for “fall,” as in “fall down,” is “boom.” If she tripped and we asked what happened, she’d point to the accident site and say, “Allie boom.” Or if we tell her, “Be careful, don’t climb [on the furniture],” “Sit down when you’re on the couch,” she’d reply with, “Boom.” That means, “I understand, I’m to be careful so that I don’t fall.” So of course, now Allie is saying, “Wa-wa boom.” We’ll have to remember that that’s her word for “waterfall.”

When we got home from work yesterday, Jayne asked me, “So was that stir-fried vermicelli with pumpkin today?”, referring to the new food item we’d packed for Allie’s lunch.
It was Chinese stir-fried glass-noodles (or rice noodles), but to make things more understandable, that’s what I’d called it on Allie’s food log.
“Yeah,” I told her. “My parents made it yesterday. She eats anything my parents make.” (We’d visited my parents on Sunday afternoon and my mom had made it for lunch, and we’d packed some for home.)
Allie, overhearing, said, “Gong-gong. Po-po.”
It took me a second to realize Allie knew we were talking about her grandpa (gong-gong) and grandma (po-po), even tho we’d never referred to them as anything but “my parents.” She also knew the dish as “noodles,” not as “vermicelli,” so I have no idea how Allie understood what we were talking about. I was impressed.

I made a quinoa “fried rice” with chopped carrots, peas, corn and turkey last night. Allie wanted to look in the pot (“up up puh puh puh” with her arms raised at me, and pointing at the pot on the stove) and I thought she’d see the finished product and say, “Rice,” since to me, it’s now a product called “fried rice.” But instead, peering in she said, “Corn! Peas!” Funny, seeing things as sharp, separate components in the limited experience of a child. I guess this is why kids pick out bits and pieces of a food (like pizza) they’ll eat or not eat instead of just taking in the whole.

This isn’t the first time she’d said this, but this is the first time I realized this is Allie’s first full sentence.
“I’m done.”
🙂

Q: How many generations does it take to produce the above?
A: Three. (rest mouse pointer on photo for caption, as with all my photos)

Over the weekend, I wanted to take a side-view shot of me doing an elephant trunk yoga pose (I’ve never seen myself do it, and if I looked over at a mirror, I’d fall), so I set up my Samsung Galaxy S3 cell phone by propping it against one of Allie’s toys and setting the timer.

The lighting was dim and the flash on my phone wouldn’t work because I was really low on battery. I considered changing the Scene Mode on the Android phone to “Dim Lighting” so it’d extend the exposure to make things brighter. All of a sudden, I thought, “Hey, I can take this photo on the iPad Mini. Duh! And I don’t even need a prop because the case props the iPad up on its own.” So for the first time, I touched the iPad’s camera icon and prepared to set up the shot. I touched the slider to make the camera forward-facing, then I looked for the option to set the timer. Since iPad has no “Menu” button like Android has, I could not figure out how to bring up the Options menu. There are no buttons on the camera screen to do anything but take the photo, choose video or photo, and to turn forward-facing or backward-facing. I exited the camera app and went into basic Settings to see if, like other things, options for the apps are actually hidden in basic Settings and not in the app itself. Nope, no options for doing anything with the camera at all. WTF.
I went on the social networking site and asked for tips. Someone said their iPhone has an “Options” button on the camera, but that it only had the options of panorama, gridlines, and HD. Another friend told me there ARE no options for the camera; I’d have to look for an App in the iTunes Store and download a separate camera app to do what I want. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I consider this BASIC. How can Apple be “such a superior product” and not even have basic crap like a timer function and different settings on its built-in camera? My Galaxy S3 phone has, built-in, 5 shooting modes (single shot, share shot, buddy photo share, beauty, smile shot, not that I’ve even tried any of those), 3 effects modes (black & white, sepia, photo negative), and 10 scene modes (portrait, landscape, sports, party/indoor, beach/snow, sunset, dawn, fall color, text, and candlelight). If none of those make you happy, you can also manually set the exposure value, white balance, ISO, metering, focus mode (auto or macro), resolution, and you can also turn on/off various other options like flash, timer, auto contrast, guidelines, anti-shake, image) Of course you can also choose where you want the photo to be stored, such as in the phone or in a separate SD card, which is an option no Apple device will give no matter what app is used, because Apple products do not want you to access the internal hardware so they do not allow for memory to be added by an SD card. It’s also, I’m sure, a way to sell iDevices with progressively larger internal memory options and charge people more.

I was not going to pay money to bring this remedial camera up to par on the iPad Mini, so I guess that’ll be yet another function I will not use the iPad for. You’d think that with such a bare bones system being sold, Apple would charge a lot less for iDevices, but nope. I don’t think I’m asking for a lot, here. I’m not asking for as many options as the Galaxy S3 has, I just want a few simple options, such as either manual adjustment of exposure time, or an “indoor” mode since the iPad does not have a flash, and a timer. Basic, basic. I’m not telling it to do what a DSLR camera does. (BTW, the last time I used my DSLR, I took this shot of the Supermoon on June 22. A few of my DSLR-savvy friends had to deal with my whining about settings, and Mr. W had to crop the shot for me, but ultimately, I guess I’m happy with it. Just for fun, here it is: 200mm lens, F/11, 1/250 secs, ISO at 250

I was confused why my settings were so different from my friends’ settings on their Supermoon shots, especially the ISO. That’s what I get for being SO rusty I had to brush cobwebs off the DSLR when I pulled it out, and I had needed a quick tutorial on setting up the tripod from Mr. W.)

On the drive to work, I asked Mr. W, “Okay, I do NOT understand why so many people like Apple. The more I learn, the more I don’t understand this. Can you explain this to me?”
He pointed out a few things, such as:
* Apple hardware is very stable and reliable
* Apple community is better than Android because it’s less fragmented. I asked what he meant by “fragmented,” and he said because so many devices by different manufacturers use Android, there is inconsistent tech support, different OS updates being used/available to different devices at different times, and too many third-party app developers.
He admitted that the Samsung Galaxy hardware is in fact, “very good,” but that it doesn’t change the fact that the Android apps available in the open-source environment are hit-or-miss on quality. He said Apple controls their developers and apps, so they will not allow for a release of an inferior quality app, and if one slips by, Apple will see to it that it’s “taken care of” ASAP. I said that it sounds like Apple is a control-freak company, and he agreed and said that’s what makes them so good — tight hold on quality control, to run their system as they wanted.

Our conversation brought up the possibility in my head that I may not be as much an Android fan as a Samsung Galaxy fan, because my first smartphone was an LG Ally (which I drowned in the lake by using my kayak as a stand-up paddle and doing a little dance with my feet on the outer edges of the kayak), and I was NOT impressed by that Android phone at all. Hmmm.

Generally, in theory, I still lean toward Android’s way of doing things. It’s like a communist government vs. a capitalistic free market government. I like and am comfortable with the concept that people can put stuff out there for consumers, and if consumers don’t like it, they can vote with their wallets. Besides, I have no problem doing a little homework reading reviews. The Apple way just feels like the corporation has too much control, in the same way “rumor” has it that we’ve had the technology for electric or hydrogen or other environmentally-friendly cars for a long time, but the big gasoline industry had been knocking out their competition with their fat wallets and influence.